Simi Valley Couple Escort Big Trucks Both Far and Wide

SIMI VALLEY —  When Barbara and Doyle Payne hit the road, people tend to get out of their way.

That’s what the flashing yellow lights, florescent orange flags and large, oversize-load signs on the Paynes’ two pickup trucks are for: to warn motorists that they are about to encounter a giant traffic-inducing nightmare barreling down the highway.

The husband and wife team, who run Uneeda Pilot Car Service out of their Simi Valley home, travel more than 50,000 miles a year escorting really big trucks carrying really big things across Southern California and beyond.

When an object is too large for a train or plane to transport, trucks and their required escorts pick up the slack.

The Paynes have helped transport hundred-ton space shuttle parts, Boeing 707 and submarine fuselages, power station transformers and prefabricated McDonald’s restaurants. Some loads are so huge that a 13-axle truck with another cab in the rear is needed to move the object.

But the Paynes don’t push, pull, own or insure the oversized loads. They just escort them along routes approved by the California Department of Transportation, making sure the loads don’t slam into overpasses or squash motorists.

“It’s a weird business,” said Barbara recently, hours before the Paynes left for a five-day trip to Cape Canaveral with a multimillion-dollar satellite in tow. “Never in my life did I imagine myself doing this for a living. I hardly knew what a pilot car was.”

Whenever the Paynes tell people what they do, the next question is always, “What’s that?”

Other escort drivers complain about late-night telephone calls from people looking for dates.

A former corporate secretary, Barbara was ready for a change six years ago when she was introduced to a woman who drove a pilot car in the Bay area.

Not long after, Barbara traded in her business suits and high heels for a CB radio and a set of flares and quickly mastered the art of dodging flying tire treads.

“I didn’t know anything about the business,” said Barbara, 60, who is vice president of the California Professional Escort Car Assn. “I had to learn everything from scratch, even the vocabulary.”

Although Barbara now spouts off phrases like “four-wheelers” (motorists in cars) and “field goal the signals” (successfully guiding a tall load between a set of signal lights), she purposely avoids other lingo on the CB.

“There are some pretty crude people out there in the trucking business, especially in heavy hauling,” Barbara said.

A casualty of the construction bust, Doyle, 61, decided to learn the ropes from Barbara, who had already become a veteran escort of space shuttle parts.

“Doyle joined up in ’93 . . . yeah . . . ‘93, because that’s when we escorted the Titan missile launchers,” Barbara said. “You remember some loads more than others.”

The pilot car business began after World War II, when the government required trucking companies to provide escorts for oversized loads, said pilot car legend Don Herning of Hesperia, who has tallied 3 million miles in 40 years of escorting.

The escort simply alerts other motorists to the oversized load and serves as an extra set of eyes for the truck driver.

Herning, who began escorting loads before CBs existed and the interstate highway system was still a novel idea, is considered by many pilot car drivers to be a de facto historian of the escort business.

“The business took off once truck companies discovered it was cheaper to rent out escorts than hire their own,” Herning said. “When I started in 1956, I only remember seeing three other pilot car companies on the road. Now there are about 250 in Southern California.”

The Paynes, who are paid by the mile and the hour, spend so much time on the road that you might say they commute for a living.

“But it’s never boring,” Barbara said. “We’re constantly keeping an eye on road hazards, the load and communicating by CB.” Books on tape and chewing gum also help the time pass quickly, Barbara said. The pair rarely drive together, but sometimes share a job when two escort trucks are required.

People in cars are one source of irritation for the Paynes during long road trips.

“I wish four-wheelers would learn to drive,” Barbara said. “They never look beyond their hood ornaments.”

Frustration eventually gives way to cynicism, according to veteran pilot car driver Bill Patchell of San Bernardino, who claims to have escorted Big Foot, the Monster Truck.

“I assume motorists will do the dumbest possible thing they can think of,” Patchell said. “But I’m not allowed to hit them over the head with a two-by-six with a nail in it.”

Four-wheeler resentment is another headache. Nobody likes driving behind a leviathan inching its way up a two-lane road.

“People flip me off all the time, but I just smile and blow them a kiss,” Patchell said. “It really unnerves them.”

And then there are the trips from hell--when the loads take a chunk out of a vertically challenged overpass, stall out on train tracks or shed bolts and two-by-fours.

The Paynes barely survived the Attack of the Gargantuan Load: a 460,000 pound, 235-foot-long wing press for Boeing Aircraft.

“It was so heavy, we had to close down 14 bridges in Oregon so it could drive over it alone,” Barbara said. “And it was so long it could only travel in a straight line.”

Big or tall, the Paynes handle it all.

Except mobile homes. They don’t like them.

Said Doyle: “Who wants to keep an eye on a big box all day?”